If the Republican Primary for President of the United States were today, and you were filling out your Republican primary ballot now, who would you vote for? (candidate names rotated) Mitt Romney? Newt Gingrich? Ron Paul? Rick Santorum? Or one of the other Republican candidates?

Just ran the CNN calculator - at this point, I honestly think Santorum would have to win almost every May and June contest, and could definitely finish strong in April (A comfortable Pennsylvania win, staying competitive with Romney elsewhere and possibly a win in Delaware). California is a state I think Santorum will need to win in order to keep Romney from getting enough delegates. I don't think there's any realistic way that Santorum claims enough delegates - he's either convention or bust at this point.

Just ran the CNN calculator - at this point, I honestly think Santorum would have to win almost every May and June contest, and could definitely finish strong in April (A comfortable Pennsylvania win, staying competitive with Romney elsewhere and possibly a win in Delaware). California is a state I think Santorum will need to win in order to keep Romney from getting enough delegates. I don't think there's any realistic way that Santorum claims enough delegates - he's either convention or bust at this point.

Today, FOX said he'd have to win 80% of the delegates from here out to win the nomination. If you assume Gingrich's delegates go to him, it ends up being a bit less than 80%, but it's not going to happen.

California is a state I think Santorum will need to win in order to keep Romney from getting enough delegates. I don't think there's any realistic way that Santorum claims enough delegates - he's either convention or bust at this point.

A narrow win in California for Santorum may still mean Romney wins the majority of delegates there. Only 10 delegates are awarded WTA on a statewide basis, the rest are by CD. Romney is quite likely to pick up a lot of more Democratic districts with (relatively) few votes. While Santorum winning some weird Democratic districts here or there can't be ruled out (see Detroit), he's still going to need to win big to get a big delegate windfall here.

Rick needing to win CA to stop Romney is just another way of saying that Rick is already toast. Rick needs to find another path to the nomination that does not run through California, because that to Rick is like the Darian Gap in Panama that kept the Inca and Aztec cultures hermetically sealed from each other; the place is just impassible for him, with the the two Mastiff's at the gate both looking very hostile - the Torie mastiff smoking a joint savoring disordered pornography, and the Angel Maroni LDS mastiff on the other side barking out "use Rick up."